Xntrttisttnfi (25rottris|jontrrnce. 



L E T 1^ E R 



OF 



COMMODORE STOCKTON 



IN THE 



SLAVERY QUESTION. 



NEW YORK: 
£. VV. BENEDICT, rRINIER, 16 SPGUCE STREET- 

1850. 



Y' 



^ A« 






MR. WEBSTER TO COMMODORE STOCKTON. 

Washington, March 22, 1850. 
My Dear Sir : — 

I send to you, as an old friend, a copy of my late speech 
in the Senate. It relates to a subject quite interesting to the 
country, as connected with the question of proper governments 
for those new territories which you had an important agency 
in bringing under the power of the United States. 

I would hardly ask your opinion of the general sentiments 
of the speech, although I know you are a very competent judge ; 
but that, being out of the strife of politics, your judgment is not 
likely to be biassed, and that you have as great a stake as any 
man in the preservation of the Union, and the maintenance of 
the Government on its true principles. 

I am, dear sir, 

With great respect, yours, 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 
Commodore Stockton. 



REPLY OF COMMODORE STOCKTON. 

Princeton, March 25. 
Dear Sir : — 

I thank you for your letter and a copy of the recent speech 
delivered by you in the Senate of the United States. 

I need say nothing- in commendation of your course, which has 
been so generally approved, and will proceed (without referring 
to any difference of opinion that may seem to exist between us on 
the subject), to communicate to you my candid and long-cherished 
opinions on the subject of slavery as it exists in the United 
States, and the duty of the Government and the people in con- 
nection with it. 

In view of a national crisis in the affairs of Great Britain, one 
of her eminent statesmen once said : "In order to be prepared 
for the trials of these times, we should be possessed of a prompt 
facility of adverting in all our doubts to some grand and compre- 
hensive truth. In a deep and strong soil must that tree fix its 
roots, the height of which is to reach to heaven, and the sight of 
it to the ends of the earth." 

A great crisis presents itself in the path of the Republic. 
Interests of incalculable consequence are involved in it — to you, 
to myself, to every citizen — consequences not limited to our 
times, but extending onward to all future generations ; and, if 
there is anything in the hopes that have been cherished of the 
uni^rsally progressive principles of liberty, to the world for ages 



6 COMMODORE STOCKTON 

to come, " There are times, (saj's another eminent person,) 
when the assertion of great principles is the best service a man 
can render society," and this is such a time. We are all called 
upon to pause at the present crisis, and consider well what are 
the demands of duty. It is no time to palter about party distinc- 
tions or sectional differences ; now, if ever, it becomes us to feel 
that we are Americans, only Americans. It is no time to calcu- 
late questions of personal popularity ; that sacrifice w^hich any 
citizen may make is as nothing, if it contributes to save his 
country. A Jerseyman myself, born on one of those proud 
battle-fields where American liberty w^as purchased ; bearing a 
life devoted to the service of the Union — I can withhold nothing 
from the cause of that Union with which I solemnly believe 
liberty is herself identified, " one and inseparable." 

It appears to me that the polar truth to which the Adew of our 
fellow-citizens should be directed in the present emergency, is 
this — That God works in the affairs of nations, and shapes them 
to His purposes ; and that to ascertain His will we must study in 
the school of His Providences, and take counsel from the 
observation of His ways to regulate our own. The destinies 
of men and of nations are in the bosom of the Most High. 
He lives in the history of the past ; He will live in the history of 
the future ; and he who has most deeply reflected upon the 
records of the past, has most clearly seen that the great charac- 
teristics which have marked the progress of every nation, in every 
age, have eventually resulted in the accomplishment of some 
grand design in which the hand of Providence, though for a time 
obscured by shadows, has been at last clearly and distinctly 
seen. 

Of this our own history furnishes a luminous example. The 
preparation for the erection of the great temple of civil and reli- 
gious liberty we now inhabit, began in the discoveries and con- 
vulsions of the 15th century. The materials for it were found in 
men schooled by providential trials, and disciplined to the work 
they were to commence ; and it is as rational to suppose the world 
was the production of chance, as to suppose that the combination 
of events which led them to this continent, which cherished and 
protected their infant colonies, which brouglit about the Revo- 
lution and its results, and has made us what we are, was the 



ON SLAVERY. 7 

work of chance ; it is this which inspires me with hope, that 
He who founded the Republic will save it — that He has great 
purposes to accomplish yet, and that they will be unfolded 
throug-h successive years for ages to come, in perfecting the 
institutions of a rational freedom here, and in extending them to 
all other continents. 

Though men were the instruments, the American Revolution 
was the work of an unseen Power — the actors in it themselves 
looked back with astonishment at the course they had taken, and 
the results that had been accomplished. The greater the event, 
the more clearly has the hand of Providence always been seen 
in it — the greater the hero, the more heartfelt always has been 
his acknowledgment that a superior destiny controlled his actions. 
The American Constitution is the result of a fearful struggle. 
Its full price was by no means the sufferings undergone in the 
conflict. The series of events by which it was accomplished, 
we are now able to trace distinctly back, through the privations 
and trials of the early colonists, to the days when popular free- 
dom first began the contest with arbitrary povver in the civil wars 
of England — and its pathway is everywhere marked with patient 
endurance and costly sacrifice. 

Things permanently good are of slow growth — the offspring 
of hardship, they are made strong through suffering. So uni- 
versal is this law, that the most hasty minds have a secret mis- 
giving of the efficacy of hasty products ; and we would as soon 
expect undisciplined troops to be equal to the hardships and 
perils of a dangerous campaign, as that an undisciplined com- 
munity could triumph in that fiercest of all warfares, the war- 
fare which marks everywhere the pathway to national existence, 
greatness and virtue. 

More than two centuries have passed since the events which 
were to result in founding the Republic were put in motion ; and 
who does not perceive, both in our colonial and constitutional 
history, that the process by which we have, within a coni])ara- 
tively few years, come to the full achievement of a distinctive 
nationality, has been one mainly of forbearance and self-denial? 
Nor have we been the only sufferers. When our ancestors came 
to this country, they found it in the possession of another race. 
That race has had their day. A great continent, -fitted by na=- 



8 COMMODORE STOCKTON 

lure for large developments in the progress of humanity, had 
been for centuries committed to their keeping, and they had 
proved faithless to their trust. It was manifest from the com- 
mencement of the struggles, that one of the tw^o races must give 
way to the other, and no one doubts the beneficence of that Pro- 
vidence which decided for the Anglo-Saxon race. Yet how 
touching is the story of the red man's wrongs ! We commiser- 
ate his sufferings, while we clearly see that the decree by which 
his race wastes away before the advancing footsteps of civiliza- 
tion, is the fiat of Infinite Wisdom. 

The same all-pervading Providence has brought us in contact 
with still another race — the African ; but under widely different 
circumstances. Out of this circumstance, and the events con- 
nected with it, the crisis we are now considering has grown. 
Three millions of that race, scattered through fifteen of the 
States of the Union, are in the condition of servitude. Individ- 
uals in the non-slaveholding States have not only been long in 
the habit of denouncing the holding of slaves as a sin, as, 
indeed, among the worst of crimes, but have insisted on imme- 
diate and unconditional abolition — have carried on the work of 
agitation — have encouraged slaves to desert their masters — have 
protected fugitive slaves from pursuit and reclamation, and have 
even gone so far as to declare that it was cause for separating 
from the South altogether. 

The general Government has been agitated ; compromise afler 
compromise has been made, and proved, as was to be expected, 
only the means of postponing, rather than of settling the ques- 
tion ; until at last things have reached a condition that real 
danger to the Union seems to be apprehended by the w-isest men 
of both sections of the country. It is time for men now to speak 
out, calmly but fearlessly. Whatever has been wrong should be 
made right, and the question settled now and forever. We 
should not meanly shrink from our just responsibilities and put 
them upon our children. 

Now, in reference to the relation of master and slave, it is 
proper we should bear in mind that African slavery was intro- 
duced into this country by no act of ours. For its introduction 
the American people are in no just sense responsible. Its intro- 
4uption here was the act of Great Britain, while we were 



- ON SLAVERY. 9 

her colonies. She engrafted this system into our communities 
at a time when these communities (then in their infancy) were 
unahle to make any effectual resistance. Our ancestors, at the 
time, and through all the process by which it was accomplished, 
remonstrated and protested against it ; but their remonstrances 
and protests were unheeded. Its introduction was considered by 
the early colonists an evil — a measure of oppression to them as 
well as to the slave — but they were as powerless to resist it as 
the slave himself. 

So far as we are concerned, this circumstance in our condition 
is Providential. If we would presume to scrutinize and judge 
the ways of Providence, we are driven back to first principles. 
God rules in the affairs of nations and of men as an absolute 
sovereign, and shapes all human events to his great purposes. 
The purposes He designed to accomplish in all this, may be in- 
volved in comparative darkness now ; but if it shall appear here- 
after that this was the means by which in the lapse of centuries, He 
accomplished the redemption of Africa herself, who will say that 
the means He chose were inconsistent with his wisdom or his 
goodness % 

This fact, then, is undisputed, that when the battles of the 
Revolution had been fought — when the North and the South had 
passed shoulder to shoulder through that long and bloody and 
self-sacrificing struggle, and the independence of their country 
was achieved, the institution of slavery, planted by other hands 
in our midst, existed. A very large number of our citizens, both 
in the North and South, were slaveholders. Property is the 
creature of the law, and slaves had been made property by law — 
been so held for ages. What was to be done ? The general 
welfare — the preservation of all that had been gained — the law of 
self-defence, required that a Government should be established, 
and that this Government should embrace and combine in one in- 
dissoluble union, all the liberated colonies. If that had not been 
accomplished, all would have been shipwrecked together. 

The men of the Revolution saw this plainly. They were men 
equal to the crisis. They considered the question as a whole. 
They sacrificed on the altar of concession their different views 
and interests as to particulars, that they might reach harmoniously 
the grand result. The articles of confederation, and subsequently 



10 COMMODORE STOCKTON 

the constitution, were the results of compromise — and Avhatever 
politicians may say — 'the spirit — the intent — the fair construction of 
that compromise is, that the institution of slavery belongs ex- 
clusively to the States, as a matter of State regulation, and that 
the general government has nothing to do with it. 

No power over it was delegated by the Constitution to the 
general Government (except as to the importation of Slaves into 
the States,) nor was any such power prohibited by it to the 
States. It was expressly provided that persons held to service or 
labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, 
should not be discharged from such service or labor, but should 
be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or 
labor might be due ; and by an amendment to the Constitution, 
adopted in 1791, it was provided that the powers not delegated to 
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the 
States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people. 
Such is the Constitution — such the compromise upon which it 
was formed — such the imperative necessity of that compromise : 
and even if that compromise and that Constitution were the re- 
sult of a mistake, it is binding now, and as long as it shall remain 
unaltered, on every law-abiding man. 

If the toleration of slavery — if the permission for its existence 
in any part of the Union was a great national crime — when and 
by whom was that crime committed 1 At the formation of the 
government, at the adoption of the Constitution, and by the 
Washingtons, the Roger Shermans, the Hamiltons, the Madi- 
sons, the Franklins, the Pinkneys of the land — ^by such men as 
Livingston and Paterson, Brearly and Dayton of my own native 
State, approved and sanctioned with unparalleled unanimity by 
the North and South. Under its auspices I need not say with 
what giant strides the republic has advanced to greatness and 
prosperity, nor that Heaven has smiled propitiously upon our 
common heritage. 

Now, the question which has come up with such a threatening 
aspect before the country, is in my judgment one of morals not of 
politics — questions always the most difficult and dangerous to deal 
with — because they do not lie in notions of expediency, but in 
matters of conscience. They are always liable to run into fana- 
ticism, and are always mingled with questions of religious faith 



/ 



ON SLAVERY. " 11 

and moral obligation. The question is one of morals, and as 
such it is to be settled, if settled permanently at all. Out of this 
aspect of the case have sprung, as incidents, all the questions that 
have heretofore been and are now the subjects of discussion. 
The convention of '87, the Missouri compromise, the contested 
question of abolition petitions in Congress, the agitations in the 
North, the recriminations of the South, the difficulties about 
fugitive slaves, and latterly, the California question and the 
Wilmot Proviso, are all but branches of one fruitful tree — the 
question as to the moral character of slavery as it exists in the 
States, and the moral duty consequent upon that character. In 
reference to those phases or incidents of this question, which 
involve the action of the government, they never would have 
been unsettled, or at any rate never would have come up in their 
present embarrassing forms, if the general government had 
adhered, as it ought in my opinion to have adhered, from the 
beginning, to a strict construction of the Constitution. The 
framers of this instrument meant to exclude, and by the language 
of the instrument did exclude the national government from all 
action upon the subject. 

They granted no such power, they expressly excluded all 
powers not granted. Whenever the doctrine of inferential 
powers — that latitudinarian doctrine — comes fully to be insisted 
on and adopted, the Constitution will become itself a thing of 
wax, to be moulded by the ever-changing opinions of men, into 
whatever shape those opinions happen to take — the majority will 
become supreme — its will, the Constitution, and everything 
conservative, will be liable to be broken down. Suppose a 
measure oppressive — ruinous to one portion of the Union, is 
adopted by a mere constitutional majority, and in constitutional 
form — it is said the party complaining and denying its constitu- 
tionality, has an appeal to the Supreme Court. But to argue that 
that is always to be regarded as a place of absolute security, is to 
argue that it is infallible. It undergoes the process of change by 
death ; the new incumbents are apt to partake of the views of the 
Constitution held by a majority of the government, and the Court 
to become itself the advocate of those views. Beyond this are 
the rocks, the breakers of revolution ; the dernier resort of an 
oppressed people. The Constitution itself was originally in 



13 COMMODORE STOCKTON 

tended to be the cable and anchor of the Union and all its parts — 
and nothing, you may rely upon it, but the doctrine of a strict 
construction can ever presers'e it what it was intended to be. 

Upon the question of domestic slavery in the States and in the 
territories, non-intervention is the true principle. There the 
letter of the Constitution placed it, and there it should be left. 
The law of nature, fixing the bounds of the institution by the 
unalterable constitution of the colored race ; the temperature of 
the climate and nature of the soil, and the will of the people 
acting" through the State Legislatures upon their several States, 
are the true and legitimate regulators ; and all interference, 
except moral suasion, the power of argument, the free expression 
of opinion, ought to be excluded 

I now come to the main question — the question which lies 
back of all the others. 1st. Is domestic slavery a sin, or an 
unmitigated evil 1 and 2d — What is the duty of the people 
of the non-slaveholding States, respecting it ? These questions 
go to the root of the whole difficulty. 

1st. Is domestic slavery a sin, or an unmitigated evil? In 
order to arrive at an intelligent conclusion respecting the right or 
the wrong of any complex scheme or any existing institution, 
we must be careful not to array our feelings against our reason ; 
nor ought we to allow our displeasure at particular cases of 
excess to interfere with a fair and deliberate consideration of the 
general working and tendency of the system as a whole. It 
belongs to this question to consider, first — the condition of the 
colored man as it would have been had he been left in Africa. 
2d. The circumstances under which we find him here. 3d. 
The necessity, if such there be, of his present continuarce in 
the condition in which we find him. 4th. The ultimate 
tendency of what may seem to be a Providential arrangement of 
this state of things. 

1st. Of all the races of men with which history and travel 
have acquainted us, there is none so sunk beyond all hope of 
self-restoration as the African, on' his wide continent. In ignor- 
ance so utter, that he is CiCvated little above the brute ; in 
superstition so gross, that it drags him even lower than the 
brute ; without a thought of liberty, he is the sport of tyranry in 
its lowest, meanest, and most cruel forms ; he has nothing he 



ON SLAVERY. 13 

can call his own ; he has no idea of God, of justice, of moral 
oblig-ation, of the rights of persons or property. In a word, 
* ' Africa has long- forgotten God and God has abandoned Africa ' ' 
— but not, I trust, forever. From such a land and such a con- 
dition — sold, bartered away by his countrymen — the slave was 
brought to these shores while we were colonists, and subject to 
British law. Here he is in a civilized and Christian country ; 
he has more opportunities of enlightenment than he would have 
had in Africa ; he is, as a general rule, treated with kindness ; 
he is protected from want in sickness and old age ; and is, on the 
whole, better off, safer, happier, than he would have been in his 
native country. 

2d. But in the second place, with the moral character of the act 
bringing the slave to this country, we have now nothing to do. 
We find him here — the thing is done. So far as the slave trade 
is concerned, we have acted on that, and abolished it. Slavery 
was introduced in other times and under other auspices. It 
existed when the government was established ; an institution 
which could not be got rid of — which had of necessity to be 
tolerated. Slaves had been made property in the Colonies by 
British law. The Government found it an existing institution, 
and the Constitution left it so — of necessity, imperative and 
uncontrollable — to be enacted on exclusively by the States ; 
subject to the moulding and changing and controlling opinions 
and consciences of those concerned. These have not been inactive. 
In many of the States the institution has been abolished ; in 
others, meliorated ; in all, it is a question for opinion and 
conscience to act upon. As the General Government has no 
power to abolish it, so it has no power to prevent any State from 
abolishing it. 

3d. In the third place, every considerate man sees, that in the 
present condition of things, slavery cannot be immediately and 
absolutely abolished. We must reason about things as they 

are not as we might wish them to be. The slave is property ; 

he became so by a law of our common ancestors ; he was left in 
that condition bv the law of our common fathers who founded 
the Republic. The burden of this purchase should be borne in 
all justice, equally by our citizens, and we are not ready to pay 
the price. But if we were ready, he is not in a condition to 



14 COMMODORE STOCKTON 

take care of himself. He has not the culture, the training, the 
experience, necessary to self-dependence. And where is he 
to go ? No reflecting man is prepared to say he is willing to 
have three millions of slaves turned loose in the States, to fill 
the prisons and poor-houses and alms-houses of the country, or 
to live by plunder on the community. What, too, is to be his 
lot for the future in such a case ? Is he to live in our midst as a 
marked and degraded being, through all time, or are we pre- 
pared to place him on an equality with us, civilly and socially. 
Are we ready for amalgamation? 

There seems under those circumstances to be a necessity for 
his continuance at present in ths condition in which he is placed. 
In the fourth place, the hand of Providence seems to be clearly 
pointing out an ultimate design in all this arrangement of things. 
Yonder is Africa, with her one hundred and fifty millions of 
miserable, degraded, ignorant, lawless, superstitious idolaters. 
Whoever has stood upon her sands, has stood upon a continent 
that has geographical and physical peculiarities which belong to 
no other of the great divisions of the globe. The latter appear, 
upon the face of them, to have been adapted to draw out the 
energies of the natives in their inequalities of temperature, soil, 
and surface, inviting the ingenuity and enterprise of man to 
overcome them, and in the varieties of their products tempting 
the interchanges of commerce ; thus affording ample encourage- 
ment to the progress of civil and social improvement. But 
Africa is still, as of old, a land of silence and of mystery. Like 
the interminable dreariness of her own deserts, her moral wastes 
of mind lie waiting for the approach of influences from abroad. 
No savage people have ever advanced to a civilized state without 
intercommunication with others. All the continents of the world 
have, in their turn, been occupied and civilized by means of 
colonies ; but in no one of them did it appear so inevitably 
necessary, from a previous examination of circumstances, as in 
that of Africa. It is plain to the very eye, that Africa is a land 
to which civilization inust be brought. The attempt has been 
made over and over again by devoted missionaries and others to 
penetrate that land, and seek to impart the blessings of civiliza- 
tion and Christianity to her savage hordes. But the labor has 
been spent in vain. The white man cannot live in Africa. The 



ON SLAVERY. 15 

annals of the Moravians, of Cape Colony, of Sierra Leone, of 
Liberia, contain the records of the sacrifice of some of the best 
men that have lived to grace the pages of any people's history, in 
the vain attempt to accomplish something for her redemption 
through the instrumentality of white men. Who, then, is to do 
this work / 

Let now any calm, reflecting spectator of the present state of 
the world be asked to look at Africa, and then, from among the 
nations point out the people best calculated to do this work — 
and when his eye falls upon the descendants of the sons of that 
continent now in America, will he not say, These are the people 
appointed for that work / 

The ways of God are mysterious. So Joseph was sold a slave 
into Egypt ; so his father and his brethren were driven thither 
by providential circumstances ; so their generations remained as 
slaves in Egypt for four centuries and a half; and when the 
appointed time had come, in His own appointed way, the Ruler 
of nations led them to the accomplishment of His great purposes. 
And it is not to be forgotten, that it was not the act of holding 
this people in bondage for so many years, that Pharaoh and the 
Egyptians were punished ; but their crime was this : that when 
the Divine Being had prepared all things for the event he pro- 
posed to accomplish, and demanded, by an accredited ambassador, 
that they should be allowed to depart, " they would not let the 
people go." 

The great progenitor of the Israelites was a slaveholder ; the 
Israelites, after their emancipation, became slaveholders. Noth- 
ing is clearer than that under the Mosaic dispensation, slavery 
was lawful ; the institution was recognized and regulated by the 
law of Moses ; and the founder of Christianity and his disciples 
(though Judea and all the provinces of the Roman empire were 
in their times full of slaves, and slaves subjected to the most 
rigid laws), never forbade or even denounced the relation as 
sinful, or exhorted masters to liberate their slaves ; but en- 
joined on masters the principles of humanity and justice, and on 
slaves obedience and contentment ; and those notions of morality 
may well be questioned, which in our days disallow what Christ 
and his apostles did not disallow." 

Such an Exodus as that of the Jews from Egypt may not be 



16 COMMODORE STOCKTON 

within the purpose of the Deity in relation to the children of 
Africa now in this country, or their descendants. But has He 
no purpose in all this arrangement that has been going on, in the 
gathering of a vast family of these people here, in their condi- 
tion of servitude, endurance, discipline — in the difficulties with 
M'hich their emancipation is surrounded — in the natural im- 
possibility that the whites ever will or can consent to raise them 
to a condition of equality ? No purpose in casting their lot in a 
country so free for the interchange of opinion, and where opinion 
is so enlightened and progressive, and there is so much benevo- 
lence and Christian enterprise 1 Has he not a purpose in all 
this, to accomplish (in some way of his own, through this instru- 
mentality) the regeneration of the millions of benighted Africa? 
The germs of Colonies are already planted there, as the fruits of 
this system of servitude. But the free African among us clings 
to this country still, under all his disabilities, regardless of the 
claims of the land of his fathers upon him ; and may not slavery 
and the necessity of migration as the condition of his release, be 
the appointed instrument to produce compliance ? The colonies 
we have settled in Africa would, ere this day, have become a 
Republic of power, had the free negroes of the North been 
willing to become citizens of it. But, like the Israelities of old, 
who would but for the Divine interposition, have sacrificed their 
liberators in the wilderness, and returned into Egypt, these 
liberated descendants of Africa cannot be persuaded to look 
toward the land of their fathers. The millions of their colored 
bondmen there awaken no sympathy in their hearts. Their 
fixed and resoluted purpose appears to be to remain among 
the whites, and force themselves by progressive steps into a 
civil and social equality with them ; and it is chiefly with a 
view to strengthen themselves in these particular views and 
aspirations, that they band together under the abolition flag, and 
fill our cities with threats of vengeance against the white race, if 
they shall dare to execute the laws in relation to fugitive slaves. 
Now, when we come to reflect calmly and candidly upon all 
these circumstances, in connection with the question — is domestic 
slavery, as it exists at the South, a sin ? it seems to me that 
(juestion must be answered in the negative. The relation of 
master and slave may be, and doubtlees is, sometimes the occasion 



ON SLAVERY. 17 

of cruelty and injustice. But this is also true of the relation 
of husband and wife, parent and child, master and apprentice, 
and of employer and employed in our system of labor. But the 
abuses of a system or relation form no sound argument against 
the system or relation itself. I am no apologist for abuse. I am as 
ready as any man to denounce cruelty, unnatural separations, a 
disregard of the domestic relations, or a deprivation of the means 
of moral and religious culture to the slave, under our system of 
slavery, as a crime. But the correction of these belongs to the 
duties of the State Governments. We, in New Jersey, have no 
more right to interfere with South Carolina, than she with us, 
in such matters — nor in fact have we in New Jersey any more 
right to interfere with the slaves of South Carolina or Georgia, 
than we have with the slaves of Russia or Austria. Each 
Southern State being, in respect to this question, as absolutely 
sovereign as are Russia and Austria. We are to reason about 
the institution of Slavery as we reason about every other human 
institution, from its proper, humane, conscientious and lawful 
use, when both parties discharge their mutual obligations. 

Having established, as I think, that domestic Slavery, as it 
exists in the Southern States, is not in itself sinful or an un- 
mitigated evil, this subject is relieved from its greatest embarrass- 
ment, and now I proceed to consider : What is the duty of the 
people of non- Slave-holding States respecting Slavery ? 

Shall we attempt forcibly to break down this institution of 
Slavery? To make the attempt is : 

First. To violate the Constitution and its compromises. I care 
not whether under color of inferential instruction— assuming 
the Constitution to imply the power of interference— (which, 
by the way, I unconditionally deny)— or acting regardless of it. 
In either case, it is at best, the appeal to the mere majority 
power, acting upon and forcing the minority. 

Second. It is to attempt the liberation of the slave, and fail. 
For by the effort the most we can do is to drive the South with 
its slaves out of the Union without liberating a single slave; 
and. 

Third. It is to co7npel a dissolution of the Union. Have the 
people considered the consequences implied in this branch of the 
:ilternative ? Suppose, after all, that in opposition to the plain 



18 COMMODORE STOCKTON 

teachings of the Bible, and the judgment of God's holiest men, 
they still hold that slavery is in itself sinful, and the oicners of 
slaves are men stealers, robbers and pirates, then, indeed, this 
question assumes a more serious aspect, and Mr. Calhoun may 
no longer be denounced as either unpatriotic or extravagant 
in calling for an amendment of the Constitution, or any other 
means that will secure his constituents from imxiinent peril, 
and his posterity from the calamities of civil war. But — 

Is there not, in this view, a crime of deeper and redder dye, 
in marching over a desecrated Bible and a broken compact to shed 
oceans of fraternal blood? Is it lawful, on their own principles, 
to do evil that good may come — even if good could by it be ac- 
complished ? If they succeed in driving the South to a secession, 
they inevitably kindle the fire of a conflagration which will burn 
over this whole Republic, until it reduces to ashes the structure 
which Providence has for centuries been preparing and rearing 
up on this continent ; and, in the conflagration, their own homes 
and hopes will be mingled with the sacrifice. 

" One great principle," says Dr. Channing, " which we should 
lay down as immovably true, is, that if a good work cannot be 
carried on by the calm, self-controlled, benevolent spirit of 
Christianity, then the time for doing it has not come. God asks not 
the aid of our vices. He can overrule them for good, but they 
are not the chosen instruments of human happiness." But if 
we would adopt, as I sincerely do, the other alternative — that 
with the institution of slavery as its exists in the South, we have 
nothing to do — that we are not only prohibited by the Constitu- 
tion from meddling with it, but that it is a question of conscience 
to be settled by Southern men for themselves — a question upon 
which good men may differ, and must be left to differ if they 
will, whether in the North or South — a new train of thoughts, 
a new field of benevolent and Christian enterprise opens before 
us. Going back to the great truth from which we started, and 
regarding all the circumstances of the present state of things as 
a part of the design of Providence to accomplish a great result 
for Africa,, there is a work and a great work for us to do. Let 
the great heart of Christian benevolence in the North and the 
South unite in selecting from this vast African family, this 
nursery planted and growing on our shores, the proper subjects 



ON SLAVERY. 19 

to be sent upon the mission of redemption to the land of their 
ancestors, until the last slave shall have departed, and Africa's 
long- night shall have been dispelled by the sun of freedom and 
civilization. The philanthropist will find here enough to do to 
satisfy the largest benevolence — in acts, in personal sacrifices, in 
contributions to the cause of humanity, without the violation of 
personal or legal rights — doing good that good may come. 

Let the general government then retrace its steps — and instead 
of provisos and compromise lines, and agreements to keep up 
the balance of power — fall back upon the literal construction of 
the Constitution — adopt the principle of total non-intervention, 
now and forever — leaving the laws of nature, and the voice of 
public opinion to adjust the limits of the institution, free, uncon- 
trolled, and uninfluenced by the action of Congress, and all will 
be safe. The gordian knot will be dissolved — not cut — and the 
ark of the covenant, with its sacred deposit, be borne on safely 
to its destination. 

The measures, in short, which I would propose, are — 
1st. A declarative act in such form as may be deemed proper, 
that the Constitution gives no power to the general Government 
to act on the subject of domestic slavery, either with respect 
to its existence in the States, the Territories or the District of 
Columbia. 

2d. The most efficient act that can be framed to enforce the 
provisions of the Constitution in relation to fugitive slaves. 

3d. That California, in consideration of the peculiar circum- 
stances of her case, be admitted without the approval or disap- 
proval of that part of her constitution which relates to slavery. 

I believe these three positions, carried out, would settle the 
question forever. They involve no concessions — no compromise 
— they are no temporary expedient. They put the solution of 
the difficulty on the eternal principles of right — the law of the 
Constitution. 

I think the great majority of the North and South are pre- 
pared to place it there, and having placed it there, to stand by 
and maintain the Union at all hazards. 

I feel that I have already trespassed too long on your patience. 
But it is a subject of vast importance, and I cannot close this 



20 COMMODORE STOCKTON 

letter without a few general remarks in reference to the fore- 
going views. 

At such a time all good men will forbear, exchange opinions, 
and reason in the spirit of conciliation. 

Conscientious differences of opinion among men will always 
exist in relation to moral questions. 

Some conscientious men believe slavery to be a sin — other 
conscientious men believe that the law of property which enables 
one man to hold what they insist is the common gift of the 
Creator to his creatures, is sin. Again, still, other conscientious 
men hold that to take a glass of wine is sin, and so on through 
an endless variety of subjects. 

If these conscientious opinions, or any of them, pervade the 
majority, are all who do not hold them to be driven with fire and 
sword out of the Union, or compelled to yield their opinions^ 
equally conscientious, to the majority ? These notions are incon 
sistent with a wise moderation ; they come from an abuse ot 
reason in the first place, and a proposed abuse of power in the 
second. 

Such arguments are always drawn principally from the 
excesses of a system, rather than from the system itself, and there 
lies the error; it is the error o{ fanaticism which always puts in 
the plea of conscience, whether it burns the supposed heretic at 
the stake, or hunts down witchcraft, or impales the Nestorian, or 
fans the flame of civil war. 

Instead of railing with infuriated declamation against a system, 
because of its excesses, which are incident to every human in- 
stitution, we should calmly and dispassionately seek to extract 
the truth from the general rule rather than from its exceptions. 
The system of slavery, like every human system, has its ex- 
cesses, its exceptions from the general rule. But it is quite 
probable that there may exist in the one, as in the other, an 
absolute law, which is working out a beneficent result. If a 
man wishes to fall under the delusion of a universal fanaticism, 
it is only necessary that he adopt the method of looking at the 
special attendants of every system, to the exclusion of the general 
law which regulates them, and the work is done ; while he is 
intent with some accident of the train, the train itself has long 



ON SLAVERY. 21 

since passed on, leaving him to grow more and more inflated with 
conceit, indignation, unholy zeal and misanthropic railing; 
all the natural results of so narrow minded a procedure. 
Let every man run off with particular features out of the general 
complexion of any subject or thought, and gaze at those features 
long enough and absorbingly enough, and the best thing within 
the range of human experience, will become to him a bugbear. 
The individual, however, who neglects the " great law of com- 
pensation " in judging of human affairs, has only to apply the 
same method of judging to himself— and passing by his redeem- 
ing qualities, and looking only at his own excesses and defects, 
he will find in himself, if he is honest in the search, enough to 
satiate his appetite for condemnation and hate. It is far easier 
to condemn than to judge correctly — far easier to get into a 
passion about a subject than to get a comprehension of it. 

The idea that out of the institution of domestic slavery in 
this country is to spring the regeneration of Africa, derives, it 
seems to me, great force from the recurrence to past history. 

We invariably find that in the dispensation of Providence, 
nations which have been called to act an important part in the 
work of human progress, have been led through a long previous 
discipline of trial ; the restraints and endurance of youth have 
preceded the power and efficiency of manhood. Primary subjec- 
tion is the law of stable growth, and seems an indispensable 
condition of the advancement of our race. 

We have only to look back through a few centuries to find the 
evidences of this in the annals of our race. Our ancestors were 
for centuries a down-trodden, enslaved and toiling people. The 
Anglo-Saxon race have become what they are, by a long training 
in the school of patient endurance ; in the case of England, under 
oppressive servitude to the Roman and the Norman ; in the case 
of America, under the oppression of our mother country and the 
trying discipline of Colonial suffering. In the life of a nation, 
hundreds of years may be as a day in the life of an individual. 
It is often necessary for many generations to pass, before a new 
influence can be made to affect the mass. If all were willing, 
the work of national preparation might be more rapid ; but 
thousands are to be made willing— and by the Providential 
adaptation of the means to the end. 



22 COMMODORE STOCKTON 

It is conceded, on all hands, that the probation of the African 
people, now in bondage on our shores, is to come to an end. 

That while there is an interchange of benefits between the 
parties, there is at the same time a community of evil, which 
renders it better, both for the whites and the blacks, that it should 
come to an end. 

When shall that time be, is the great question before the 
American people. 

In seeking an answer to this question, we may be sure there is 
some safer ground on which to take our stand, than that of 
political chicane, of fanatical prejudice, or of any merely tem- 
porary or prudential expediency. 

If slavery is to be abolished now, then it is to be done in a 
moment. That is to say, at one stroke a community of three 
millions of people, habituated to a certain Avay of life, are to be 
thrown into new circumstances — a thing plainly preposterous, be- 
cause no kind of society changes its customs suddenly and succeeds 
in doing well. Great changes in society must come in with pre- 
vious preparation, or they come in to little purpose. Seven 
years sufficed to fight the battles of the revolution, but many 
more were spent in preparation for that event, and many more 
will be required to perfect its results. If Providence rules in 
the affairs of nations, the existence of slavery has some prospect- 
ive purpose, only to be accomplished by prior preparation for it. 

Let us not be impatient or presumptuous. These African 
people are passing to their destiny along the same path which 
has been trod by other nations, through a mixture of hardship, 
of endurance, but in a land of light, and amid a civili2;ed society. 
They are preparaing to accomplish a work for their native 
continent, which no other people in the world can accomplish. 
Their plain mission is, ultimately to carry the gifts of society, of 
religion, of government, to the last remaining continent of the 
earth — where these blessings are totally unknown. Their work 
is a great one, as it would seem to be connected essentially 
with the final and universal triumph of civilization and Chris- 
tianity, in the world. It is our duty to follow, not to attempt to 
lead in the ways and purposes of Providence. We are to move 
forward when the pillar of fire and cloud moves forward ; and 
to rest when it rests. 



ON SLAVERY. 23 

Doubtless there is a time for action ; but it is characteristic of 
all great changes that they make known their own seasons. 
That time, in the present instance, has not yet come — for the 
manifest reason that the way is not yet open for it. When the 
time shall come, the way will come with it, the preparations for 
it be complete. The North settled this question, easily, quietly. 
Surely it is no great stretch of charity for us to suppose that in 
due time the same thing will be accomplished in the South. We 
of the North have given no peculiar evidence of superior goodness 
that we should suppose the South not to be possessed of as much 
justice, charity, and good sense as ourselves. 

I firmly believe that the hour for the complete enfranchise- 
ment of the Southern Slave, will be the hour of the complete 
preparation for the work of African redemption and civilization — 
and that hour will make itself known in the removal of all ob- 
stacles here and there ; in the preparation of the workmen and 
the work ; and I earnestly hope that guided by happier influences 
than seem now to pervade the country, the pulpit, the press, the 
people of the North and the South, may give their thoughts and 
efforts to this subject in the spirit of Him, whose mission to our 
earth was heralded by the proclamation of peace and good will. 

With great regard, yours, 

R. F. STOCKTON. 



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